Gore Verbinski in talks to direct Channing Tatum in Gambit

It's been a tough road for GAMBIT, one of Twentieth Century Fox's many X-MEN spin-offs, with both Rupert Wyatt (RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) and Doug Liman (EDGE OF TOMORROW) leaving the project behind after signing on to direct, but now, Fox must be hoping that the third time is the charm.

Deadline reports that Gore Verbinski (A CURE FOR WELLNESS) is in the midst of making a deal to direct GAMBIT, which is still set to star Channing Tatum as Remy LeBeau, the New Orleans-based mutant with the ability to manipulate kinetic energy and turn objects into projectiles. However, Verbinski's involvement isn't a sure thing just yet, with THR's Borys Kit chiming in on Twitter to say that he's hearing that a "critical meeting is to happen next week" which could go either way at this point. With blockbusters such as the first three PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies under his belt, Gore Verbinski certainly wouldn't be overwhelmed by GAMBIT, and he just might bring an interesting style along for the ride. As for myself, I'm hoping this becomes official very soon.

What do you folks think? Is Gore Verbinski the right choice for GAMBIT?

Development on GAMBIT has been underway for several years, but it was proving difficult to capture the tone and voice of the character, and, when movies like DEADPOOL and LOGAN were able to successfully push boundaries, Channing Tatum said that it was decided that the script should be rewritten.

We lit a fuse on the first one and just blew it completely out of the water. I think we got lucky – we got hit with some setbacks and it was all for a good reason. We were trying to do something completely different. We were trying to do something that this genre of movie hasn’t seen before. We kept running into the same problems, and then Deadpool and Logan came through and kicked the doors down. Now we’re really getting to do some of the things we’ve always wanted to do with the script – we’ve just sort of started over.